1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an airbag apparatus equipped with an airbag that is folded and received in a receiving part and inflates to be able to protect the upper half of a occupant's body sitting on a seat while being developed and inflated to protrude from the receiving part by an inflation gas discharged from an inflator and flowed into the airbag. In particular, the present invention relates to an airbag apparatus equipped with an airbag having an airbag main body and a slip member disposed on the outer surface of the airbag main body.
2. Description of Related Art
In the related art, an airbag apparatus equipped with an airbag having an airbag main body and a slip member disposed on the outer surface of the airbag main body is disclosed in JP-A-2003-170795. In the airbag apparatus of the related art, the slip member, which can suppress load applied to an occupant from the airbag main body in contact with the occupant is disposed on the outer surface of the occupant protection area for protecting the occupant when completely inflating in the airbag main body. The slip member has a substantially rectangular external shape and can cover substantially the entire outer surface (rear surface) of the occupant protection area. Further, in the slip member, one side of the upper edge or the lower edge that is one edge in the longitudinal direction, or two sides of the left edge and the right edge opposite to each other in the transverse direction are connected to the airbag main body.
However, in the airbag apparatus of the related art, since the slip member is connected to the airbag main body by only one side of the upper edge or the lower edge, or two sides of the left edge and the right edge, there are the following problems.
When the slip member is connected to the airbag main body only by one side, that is, the upper edge or the lower edge, the following problem occurs. The slip member is rolled upward or sags from the airbag main body, such that it may not be sure to cover the occupant protection area of the airbag main body when the airbag main body is developing and inflating. Further, when the slip member is connected to the airbag main body by two sides, which are the left edge and the right edge, the following problem occurs. In this case, the joints of the slip member and the airbag main body are disposed throughout substantially the entire region in the longitudinal direction (up-down direction) in the airbag apparatus of the related art. Therefore, the degree of freedom in shifting (sliding) of the slip member from the airbag main body in the longitudinal direction (up-down direction) is low (small) and the slip member is difficult to shift (slide) in a large amount from the airbag main body when being in contact with the occupant. As a result, it is necessary to improve suppressing of the load of the airbag main body against the occupant. Further, it may be considered to simply make the widths of the joints small in order to increase the degree of freedom of the slip member in shifting (sliding) from the airbag main body. However, it may be difficult to completely cover the occupant protection area of the airbag main body with the slip member, similar to when the slip member is connected to only one side of the upper edge or the lower edge, when only the widths of the joints are made small.